intermittent chatter

I had registered a couple of .in domains with Indiatimes. After having a pathetic experience for something as small as changing DNS, I renewed and transferred my domains to mailNspace domains.

Although I have shifted, I received a renewal mail which said renewal charges applicable are 399!! I became curious. I thought charges were 795. I clicked on the link given in the mail and then on one more link and got to a page which said charges were 795. Below are the screen shots.

IMO, Indiatimes goofed up on 2 counts. First, they sent me a renewal mail. Don’t they get rid of old records? Second, their mail showed a wrong rate! Don’t they have someone who checks and thouroughly proof-reads the drafts of outoging mails to customers? If they don’t improve, they will surely have more and more customers like me that shift elsewhere.

I have a habit of reading thru the user’s manual of all the stuff that I buy. So was the case with the Nokia N70. But I must say I was completely disappointed. The user’s manual sucks!! It looks like a very hurriedly written document with just the bare steps of operations in it.

For example, I couldn’t even find out the memory card that it supports. I find the bundled 64MB card insufficient. I want one with more capacity. Now which one should I take? I know it can take RS-DV-MMC. But can the phone work with 1GB or 512 MB cards? Will it become slow? Will it give errors? I don’t know because there’s no information on the subject in the user’s manual or on the Nokia’s site!

A manual is a document that gives complete information not just steps on writing SMS or making a call!! One can easily figure out such things on their own anyway! I can say that all that I have figured out so far has been because of my inquisitiveness with a little bit of help from the tutorials provided in the phone. The handset is great, but the user’s manual is below par!

I have been looking for a new mobile since quite some time. My Nokia 6610 was more than 2 years old but I was not able to decide on the right model. But at last, I got a new mobile Its a Nokia N70!! I am already transferring a few MP3 and MIDI files to the memory card now! Afterall, I must personalise it

These are some of the things that I read about it

Boasting a number of minor improvements over the 6680, the Nokia N70 is a very well-rounded smartphone with a number of high-end features which competitors are hard pressed to match. Rock solid connectivity combines with ergonomic hardware and a broad set of relevant applications in a meld of form and function that’s damn good looking; our only gripe is that synchronization continues to be a weak spot for what is otherwise a truly superb smartphone.

the Nokia N70 is the best smartphone without a touchscreen, no direct rivals.

Nokia N70 is great for both work and fun. It is a nice and very well equipped phone

I finally got a new Sony DVD Writer. My friend Deep will be pretty happy on hearing this because he is a self-proclaimed “Sony Man”.

I always get fascinated every time I buy something from Lamington Road. They always have something unusual to offer. This time, I was given 2 rates for the same piece of DVD-Writer. One of them was box packed and the other one is called “OEM”. OEM was cheaper by about Rs. 400. I have been buying from the same dealer since a few years. So went for the OEM and saved 400. Afterall what will I do with the box? BTW, for record, this one isn’t a grey market purchase. I have the bill, warranty and will pay by cheque.

I have to install it and do it as soon as I finish writing this. I don’t wait for tech support guys because I am always too eager to install and use new pieces of hardware. They take little longer to come and I am pretty impatient.

Now I will take backup of all my data. I haven’t taken a complete backup of data since quite some time and now my hard disk is due for a low-level format and a clean re-install of OS. I am pretty eager to try out the new version of Mandriva as well. I recently got a DVD of Mandriva with my issue of LinuxForYou.

I today read in Mid-Day that the richest man in the world, Bill Gates is so rich that computers in the US tax offices, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cannot handle the figures in his tax returns. A separate computer is kept to handle exclusively his financial figures and still he keeps receiving false notices (followed by apologies from IRS) due to erroneous calculations made by those machines.

VSNL/Tata Indicom is going to dumps day by day. Earlier (a few years back), their whole database of users was sold and marketing calls started coming in. How do I know it was sold? Because the marketing caller had some info about me which was submitted only to VSNL while I took my first dial-up account.

Now they have started mailing their customers with clandestine adverts.

I am not against advertising in their mails. Everyone tries to optimise their revenues. But they are trying to take people for a ride by covering it up as an informational mail. Here’s an example. This is the mail that I received yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

I read in yesterday’s Mid-Day that all prepaid customers should be able to take their local train tickets via SMS. Thats really good. This is still in planning and testing stage. But is a step forward in the right direction. Integration of railways with mobiles can increase convenience manifold.

I have already mentioned earlier how area based mobile alerts can help long distance travellers.

I had installed a software called Vedabase which had a few extensions registered for itself. I also installed OpenOffice 2.0 in my machine. It hijacked a few entensions registered by Vedabase and now Vedabase is not usable. I want both the software in my machine to work perfectly. But now I will have to compromise somewhere.

As of now, I cannot afford to uninstall Vedabase because it is required for the contents of a web-site (Deity Darshan) which is being revamped and expanded. So for time being I will have to do without OpenOffice.org.

There may be so many applications doing this to other applications. I think there should be a extension repository maintained by some authority to let application makers know if the extension they are going to use is already in use by some other application. This could save us from some such trouble.

I made a web-page with some very simple Javascript (6-7 lines) and it ran as I had expected in Firefox. Just to be doubly sure, I opened the page in Internet Explorer and it showed me a blank page. It didn’t even show the plain HTML stuff. I thought I will try it in Opera, but once again it showed me a blank page!

I checked the code, there was nothing wrong in it! And if there would have been some error, how would it show in Firefox! I thought I will consult a few techie friends. I contacted Deep, Shahab and Anurag (he prefers to be called GNUrag ;)). None could point out the error that was causing the page to appear blank.

What the hell!! When will the browsers follow the standards set by World Wide Web Consortium! Everytime we make a web-page, we have to check it in different browsers and keep tweaking it till it appears almost same in all of them. What a waste of man hours and resources! What a pain!

Imagine you are travelling in the local train of Mumbai and since its a long journey of about an hour you decide to take a short nap. You change some settings in your mobile and go to sleep. As soon as the train reaches a station prior to your destination, you mobile gives you an alarm. You wake up and get down.

Isn’t this pretty convenient?

I wonder why has this been not implemented so far by the cell companies? We already have the location information being displayed in our cell phones! (In Nokia handsets its called Cell info display). This information can be fine tuned a bit to suit the purpose. Its pretty easy for the cell cos to maintain a sequential list of stations. We just need to select a location from the list. As soon as we reach that location, voila! The application sounds an alarm.

Go a step further and think about outstation journeys! No need to ask anyone about the prior station or whether the train is on time or not. Pay Rs. 50 extra at the time of booking your ticket and give your mobile number. All the basic details should keep coming to you via SMS! You know exactly how far is your destination, how many stations are left, how much time it will take and this info keeps updating every now and then. Additionally, you will be prompted in a special way when your destination is near.

Go a step further and we should be able to get more details via SMS like where is the next big station (with cafe, snacks, newspaper/magazine stand, etc.), when is it coming, for how long will train stop there, what are specialities of the coming station (e.g. oranges at Nagpur ;)), etc.

Why don’t cell cos and railways tie up to provide something like this? This could be a great value addition.